Day 6 : It’s raining on the rain

[Written by mary, edited and published by brian]

Well, last night Brian and I actually got a good night sleep, for some reason we keep waking up at 3 in the morning. Thankfully Brian downloaded some shows on his tablet. I say thankfully because Irish tv has 4 channels, and 3 are RTE which are useless state operated channels full of sports and informercial forms of yawn…bad, bad and bad TV.

Besides that, we have a few technical issues to deal with, someone has been working during our vacation (who, me?), and the bleeding rain wouldn’t stop (Only one thing to do….you know).  The original plan was to take a day at the hotel but nooo, since it’s pouring rain, let’s (road trip!) go for a drive! So, about noonish, we headed out to Birr.

We toured the castle at Birr last trip, which at one time had the LARGEST telescope in the world. We thought the town was cute back then, so we headed back to eat and see. Side note, and a bit of history, the Birr castle is still in hands of the family that built it, (around these parts known as) currently the 7th Earl of Rosse, and the family name is Parsons. Anybody, anybody,, (Bueller?), anyone?……. Yep, Parsons of Pasadena.  

The town was even more lovely (already getting in to Irish jargon, thankfully they don’t say AWESOME or AMAZING they say lovely and grand) (and perfect) than we remembered and found a quaint spot for lunch right by the castle.

(Not EVERY establishment in Ireland serves Guinness – egads)

For lunch we both had a BLT, Irish style. It’s more like Canadian bacon (cured ham), but yummy.

Toasted Ciabatta, yes, and perfectly cooked chips aka French Fries!

(Last item on the lunch) The lunch spot had this on the wall and Brian followed directions to acquire a photo of same.

(After lunch) We walked the town, but the skies opened up and rain pushed us back to trusty auto. This trip we managed to skip some of the dodgy roads, but passed by what we think are peat fields. Peat being one of the sources of heating houses, and we like the smell it gives off. Big fields of black peat, not very pretty. 

Side note, we will get some good pictures of this, but it amazes me that houses are built almost up against the roads, and some major thoroughfares, strange.

We made it back to Athlone, still raining, and guess who (absolutely not me) forgot umbrellas and a slicker for the Mr., so we hoofed it into town, found a umbrella and at a outlet center (who knew, an outlet shopping mall in Ireland) and then found him a slicker, and back to hotel. 

We see that we are simpatico with home as there is a huge storm there also. 

(Don’t float away without us folks!)